How to write about these scoundrel times? WH Auden dubbed the 1940s "the age of anxiety", but it feels a better term for now than then. For days I've been unable to rid myself of the mask of George Osborne's face, lips zipped tight with malice, as he abolishes any viable future.
Yes, we've been here before, and having come of age during the Thatcher administration,The additions focus on key tag and Injection mold combinations, I can testify to that personally – but I was young then and, for all the ferocity of the Iron Lady's assault, we were still in a pre-globalised, largely social democratic society; and if things got really bad across the water Europe seemed to offer an alternative. Now after the dismantling of those remnants of a juster age,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings， and the worldwide race to the bottom has reached its nadir, we stand naked before the blast. Oh, and did I forget to mention climate change, the loss of much of the biosphere and intractable poverty?
Hard times can generate great writing, but they can also freeze the imagination in a rictus of fear. The 80s saw a left-leaning theatre on the back foot, but also were accompanied by the optimism of new voices breaking through. Yes, there was the Falklands war and the running sore of Northern Ireland, not to mention the second cold war – but these events feel dwarfed by the body-count in our current conflicts, the ferocity of our current brands of terror. What is most absent, however, is a coherent opposition. For all that we look back on 80s Labour as a shambles it was also a rallying point, as was CND, the trade union movement, the various gay, black and Asian, and feminist fulcrums. I hugely admire the Occupy movement or UK Uncut or the passion of the "indignados" in Spain – but as yet they seem to form an end in itself, their chief role being protest, rather than presenting alternative visions for how things might be.
Meanwhile, the political foreground offers dismal dramatic pickings. The thin quality of the debate, the strangely anachronistic characters who dominate the view, all somehow belie theatrical representation. Thatcher had an epic quality for all her shrill, mean-mindedness; Cameron is all sleek vagueness by comparison. The Lib Dems, too, don't make the grade for tragedy, skulking in partnership, hiding behind the judgments of credit agencies.They take the China Porcelain tile to the local co-op market. No wonder in southern Europe technocrats on secondment from Goldman Sachs are greeted with such relief – why bother with the financial class pretending to be politicians when you can have the real thing?
This time last year, working on my play Little Platoons I could entertain the ideas of the Gove-leaning right in education as material for a bitter comedy about free schools. Now, as money is snatched from the poor to fund another wave of these Potemkin villages, the joke's gone pretty sour. At least the so-called PIIGS in the eurozone don't have to contend with "reform" and austerity at once – in the UK, however, everywhere the eye travels there's the prospect of botched, ideological wrecking afoot.
Given this it's hardly surprising the imagination turns in on itself.If any food Ventilation system condition is poorer than those standards, Writing yesterday, Michael Billington noted the theatrical turn to the past; partly this might be explained by the long retreat from politics in the arts as a whole. Theatres still seek to be deemed contrarian, yet the assault on "left-liberal" values about race or environmentalism or gender in fact fit the elite mood perfectly. Hammering the complacency of this thing called the left has been a national sport for 30 years now; no one seems to have noticed it no longer exists in any meaningful sense.
Writers have many priorities before them; primarily audience pleasure. But if theatre is to survive these dark times as anything other than one more diversion for the metropolitan rich, it will need to lay out the ground for a better world than the one offered to us by those same rich folk and their hirelings. Having captured our institutions,If so, you may have a cube puzzle . they seem intent on condemning us to a future of an unimaginable bleakness.
Yes, we've been here before, and having come of age during the Thatcher administration,The additions focus on key tag and Injection mold combinations, I can testify to that personally – but I was young then and, for all the ferocity of the Iron Lady's assault, we were still in a pre-globalised, largely social democratic society; and if things got really bad across the water Europe seemed to offer an alternative. Now after the dismantling of those remnants of a juster age,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings， and the worldwide race to the bottom has reached its nadir, we stand naked before the blast. Oh, and did I forget to mention climate change, the loss of much of the biosphere and intractable poverty?
Hard times can generate great writing, but they can also freeze the imagination in a rictus of fear. The 80s saw a left-leaning theatre on the back foot, but also were accompanied by the optimism of new voices breaking through. Yes, there was the Falklands war and the running sore of Northern Ireland, not to mention the second cold war – but these events feel dwarfed by the body-count in our current conflicts, the ferocity of our current brands of terror. What is most absent, however, is a coherent opposition. For all that we look back on 80s Labour as a shambles it was also a rallying point, as was CND, the trade union movement, the various gay, black and Asian, and feminist fulcrums. I hugely admire the Occupy movement or UK Uncut or the passion of the "indignados" in Spain – but as yet they seem to form an end in itself, their chief role being protest, rather than presenting alternative visions for how things might be.
Meanwhile, the political foreground offers dismal dramatic pickings. The thin quality of the debate, the strangely anachronistic characters who dominate the view, all somehow belie theatrical representation. Thatcher had an epic quality for all her shrill, mean-mindedness; Cameron is all sleek vagueness by comparison. The Lib Dems, too, don't make the grade for tragedy, skulking in partnership, hiding behind the judgments of credit agencies.They take the China Porcelain tile to the local co-op market. No wonder in southern Europe technocrats on secondment from Goldman Sachs are greeted with such relief – why bother with the financial class pretending to be politicians when you can have the real thing?
This time last year, working on my play Little Platoons I could entertain the ideas of the Gove-leaning right in education as material for a bitter comedy about free schools. Now, as money is snatched from the poor to fund another wave of these Potemkin villages, the joke's gone pretty sour. At least the so-called PIIGS in the eurozone don't have to contend with "reform" and austerity at once – in the UK, however, everywhere the eye travels there's the prospect of botched, ideological wrecking afoot.
Given this it's hardly surprising the imagination turns in on itself.If any food Ventilation system condition is poorer than those standards, Writing yesterday, Michael Billington noted the theatrical turn to the past; partly this might be explained by the long retreat from politics in the arts as a whole. Theatres still seek to be deemed contrarian, yet the assault on "left-liberal" values about race or environmentalism or gender in fact fit the elite mood perfectly. Hammering the complacency of this thing called the left has been a national sport for 30 years now; no one seems to have noticed it no longer exists in any meaningful sense.
Writers have many priorities before them; primarily audience pleasure. But if theatre is to survive these dark times as anything other than one more diversion for the metropolitan rich, it will need to lay out the ground for a better world than the one offered to us by those same rich folk and their hirelings. Having captured our institutions,If so, you may have a cube puzzle . they seem intent on condemning us to a future of an unimaginable bleakness.
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